So I'm in Florence!!! I've brought my computer, but I don't have any internet at this spectacular little find of a hotel my mum and I are at! Even so I'm writing down my food every night before bed (though perhaps it's insanely boring for you all). I think it'll be interesting for me to see what 'relaxing my diet' means when I'm in Italy... I've decided that I'm still going to try everything, just not have a lot of it. That's my plan.
Meanwhile... WOW Florence is spectacular. I think the fact that I really had not done my research made the whole thing blow me away with its grandeur. Every turn we made (mostly when we were lost), we ran into another enormous basilica or cathedral. And my mum and I travel in exactly the same languid way - a lot of people watching in cafes, a lot of spontenaiety, a lot of wandering and getting lost. Oh, and looking in shop windows
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Monday - Florence Day one!
Breakfast- special K with skim milk (5.45am),
Snack - croissant (9am)
Lunch - 1/2 entree-sized bowl of pasta with meat/tomato sauce, 1/2 large mixed salad with olive oil and balsamic
Snack - 1 slice bruschetta, 1/2 scoop rockmelon sorbet
Dinner - 1/2 thin veg pizza, 1/2 mixed salad
Drinks - small milk coffee, 150ml lemonade, strong black iced coffee, 200ml peach iced tea
Exercise - HOURS of wandering around

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Tuesday - Cooking class!
Breakfast: 1 slice multigrain bread, 2 slices brie cheese, 2 slices salami
Snack: 1 sundried cherry tomato
Lunch: 1 slice bruschetta, mixed salad, home-made pasta with meat and red wine sauce, 1/3 serving tiramisu
Snack: -
Dinner: 1/2 thin ham and mushroom pizza, 1/2 mixed salad
Drinks: 1/2 cappucino, grapefruit juice, home-made lemonade
Exercise: MORE wandering! Just hours and hours of wandering...
Thoughts: I spoke to my mum about my struggles with breakfast, and how I can never really get itno a proper routine that sticks. I even admitted to my old routine, the only ever one tha tI have stuck with, which was to go out every morning before work and sit at my local cafe, get a raspberry and white chocolate muffin and a soy latte and spend an hour and a half getting myself ready for my lessons. Which is hard for me to admit to my mum.
She talked about her usual breakfast (a combination of oats, quinoa, cranberries, linseed, sunflower seeds, chia, pepitas and flaked almonds), and how she takes it into the garden and spends twenty minutes eating it and not doing anything else. Not checking email, not reading a paper or a book, bothing. She sits and thinks about how she is nourishing her body, how this is setting her up for a healthy day, thinks about all the people that were involved in bringing this food to her - the farmers, the pickers, the transport people, everyone.
I think this is really beautiful. It's like her daily meditation, she says. I really wish I could do this, and I'm going to try.
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